Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

After dinner, Abby announced that she wasn’t studying because there was only one more Christmas exam left and it was art, so no studying was required. ‘Let’s get a video,’ she said eagerly.

Leonie didn’t think that Doug would be impressed by that idea and half-expected him to say he was going home. Instead, he surprised her by offering to drive the girls to the video shop.

‘I better come too,’ Danny said, ‘in case you pair get some romantic shit.’

‘Danny!’ said Leonie. ‘Language.’

‘Sorry, some romantic rubbish,’ he corrected himself.

The four of them came back with a comedy, proof that a truce had been reached because Danny and the twins never agreed on any sort of video. Mel made coffee while Abby broke open a tub of ice cream and they all had dessert while watching the film.

Abby and Doug began discussing art history quietly and Leonie pretended not to notice. If he wanted to discuss what he did for a living, he would. She certainly wouldn’t pressurize him.

It was a relaxing, enjoyable evening. When the film was over, Leonie was surprised to find that it was nearly eleven o’clock.

‘Come again,’ Danny said as Doug put on his coat.

‘Yeah,’ said the twins enthusiastically.

‘I had a nice time,’ Doug remarked as Leonie saw him out.

‘Evidence that not all neighbours are inquisitive busy-bodies who spend their lives peering out from behind their net curtains,’ Leonie laughed. ‘We must do it again. See you, bye.’

‘He’s a painter,’ Abby announced. ‘He’s going to show me his studio.’

‘Really?’ Leonie said, with what she felt was Oscar-winning astonishment.

‘He’s a cool guy,’ Danny said as he passed her on his way into the kitchen for refuelling. ‘D’you fancy him?’

In response, his mother slapped his behind. ‘No you big lump, I don’t fancy him. I reckon he’s a bit lonely and I thought it’d be nice to have him over for dinner, that’s all. You can be friends with someone without it being romantic, you know.’

‘Just wondering, that’s all.’

It would be so simple if she did fancy someone like Doug, Leonie thought as she tidied away the dishes. Imagine how handy it would be to date the man who lived around the corner. But Doug, though a decent guy, really wasn’t her type. Too moody and difficult to live with, she felt. And she hated men with red hair. Although his was more tawny red, the colour of darkening beech leaves. He’d been great tonight because he enjoyed the relaxed family atmosphere, but she reckoned he’d be a nightmare in a relationship: tense, uptight and very high-maintenance. Not her type at all. Leonie wanted a man who lived life with passion and vigour, someone who would grab her in a giant bear hug every morning, not one who looked as if he could be grumpy and who had locked himself away like a prisoner in a fairytale because he couldn’t face the world.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#ulink_c00b81aa-26c7-5742-9ac3-181e91481a8f)

‘We deserve a treat,’ Hannah had said once she’d finally convinced the other two to come with her to the hairdresser. ‘We’ve been working so hard and we have to look nice for Christmas. You’ve got that big party,’ she reminded Emma of Kirsten’s big New Year event which was hanging over her like a sledgehammer, ‘and you’ve got the wedding,’ she said to Leonie, who hadn’t forgotten either.

And I, thought Hannah silently, have a wonderful Christmas with the handsome, soon-to-be-a-big-BBC-star Felix Andretti. Of course, Felix hadn’t finalized their plans yet. He was so forgetful, he’d forget his beautiful head if it wasn’t stuck on.

‘A revamp,’ she told the others. ‘That’s what we need.’

Leonie had been getting her hair cut in the same small hairdresser’s for years. ‘Cheap and cheerful,’ she admitted, touching the ends of her golden hair, which were dry as kindling from two decades of home dyeing in an attempt to look like the Nordic blondes on the hair-colour box. ‘It’d be nice to look slightly different for the wedding,’ she added. Her hair had been the same for aeons: shoulder-length, curly and more than a little wild. ‘No hairdresser can tame this.’

Emma wasn’t too keen on having anything done. The long, silky strands had hung poker straight around her face for years, concealing her ears and falling over her eyes. ‘I like my hair like this,’ she said defensively. ‘It camouflages my nose.’ Her father had told her that when she’d been small. Kirsten, the apple of his eye, had never needed to grow her fringe long to conceal a nose like Concorde.

‘You’d swear you had a nose like an elephant,’ Hannah said briskly. ‘Honestly, you’ve a nice nose: distinctive, strong. Why hide it? You don’t want one of those retrousse little things you see on insipid girls, do you?’

‘Yes,’ laughed Emma, ‘I do. You weren’t born with a conk like mine.’

‘I’m not doing too badly,’ Hannah retorted, rubbing her own slightly beaky nose with a slim finger. ‘But I use mine for sniffing out wickedness in the office. It’s especially useful for when Gillian is bullshitting me about the amount of work she’s supposed to have done.’

‘What are you getting done?’ Leonie asked her.

‘The chop,’ Hannah answered. ‘I’ve worn it long for years because it’s handy to tie it back, but I’m ready for a change. I want it cut to my shoulders with some reddish brown lowlights put in.’

‘Get you!’ Leonie said. ‘Getting ready for the BAFTAs, are you?’

Hannah grinned infectiously. ‘No, the Oscars!’

Leonie had expected the colourist in a trendy hairdresser to be equally trendy. She’d had visions of nose piercings, ultra-hip clothes and hair that had been sliced, chopped and treated with the latest cutting-edge gels to make it fashionably messy. Instead, the colourist turned out to be a pregnant woman in her thirties who wore black dungarees with a hot pink T-shirt, and had dark, bobbed hair as shiny as glass. Her only piercings were small pearl studs, and she wouldn’t have been out of place behind the maths teacher’s desk at a parent-teacher meeting. Her name was Nicky and as she ran her fingers through Leonie’s bleached mop in a professional manner, she said: ‘You tell me what you would like me to do and I’ll tell you what I think.’

Leonie looked at herself critically in the mirror. Heavily made-up in preparation for the onslaught of harsh hairdresser lights and the big, cruel mirrors, Leonie thought she’d looked quite reasonable when she’d left the house. Somehow, now, she merely looked over made-up, tarty almost. Her hair was awful, she realized in desperation. Bottle-blonde meets Amsterdam’s red-light district with a detour into a Soho sex shop.

‘I don’t know, Nicky,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s terrible. I’ve been dyeing it myself for years and the ends are dry, over-bleached and well…’ she sighed, ‘a mess. Maybe I’m too old to be blonde.’

‘Nonsense.’ Nicky was brisk. ‘The colour’s wrong for you; you need a more subtle blonde to tone in with your skin. Skin fades as we get older, so you’ve got to go for a more toned-down hair colour. What you need are lots of tawny browns to break up the golden blonde, with some pale golds running through it. You may have to rethink the make-up too,’ she said appraisingly. ‘Heavy eyeliner will be too strong for your new look.’

‘You think so?’ Leonie was unsure. ‘I’ve always done it this way. My eyes are so indistinct without kohl and lots of mascara.’

‘Nonsense, you’ve beautiful eyes. I’ve never seen anyone with such blue eyes,’ Nicky said earnestly. ‘While you’re under the drier waiting for the colour to take, I’ll get one of the girls from the beauty salon upstairs to come down and do your eyes for you. You won’t believe it when I’ve finished with you. Now, do you want tea or coffee?’

Emma, who was only having her hair cut, was finished first.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Leonie anxiously, angling her head in the mirror to look at her new haircut from every angle. The long strands which had hidden her amber-flecked eyes had been cut back and, although Emma had only allowed two inches to be cut from the longest layers, the whole effect was very different. You could see Emma’s sweet, patient face properly and she didn’t need to pull strands of hair out of her eyes any more. She looked older without the schoolgirl hair, although you’d still never guess she was thirty-one.

‘It’s fantastic!’ Leonie said warmly.

Hannah was finished next. Her once-long hair had been cut to shoulder level and low-lighted, so that cinnamon and chocolatey strands rippled through her own dark brown colour. Glossy and bouncy, it swung as she walked, framing her face elegantly. Her full lips glistened with bronze gloss and she looked like a supermodel.

‘Get you,’ said Leonie, feeling very ugly in comparison, as her hair was now adorned with scores of tinfoil flaps which looked like some sort of medieval headdress perched on her head.

The new colours made Hannah’s almond-shaped eyes even more striking and matched the smattering of amber freckles across her cheeks.

‘Do you think it’s all right?’ she asked, running her fingers through the glossy strands apprehensively.

‘Fantastic,’ Leonie said. ‘And if you wonder will Felix love it, he’d want to be mad not to.’

Emma and Hannah arranged to come back in an hour.

‘If my hair isn’t cooked by then, it’ll never be done,’ Leonie said gloomily.

They left and Leonie returned to her magazines. Fed up with looking at impossibly gorgeous people in the social columns of Tatler, she got her hands on a tattered Hello! Everyone in that was stunning, too. There had to be scope for an ‘Ordinary People’s Weekly’, Leonie felt. A magazine with normal people in it, normal people with big backsides, blocked pores and clothes that looked as if they’d been purchased in the ‘two-blouses-for-fifteen-quid’ section of a chain store and put on in the dark.

She was marginally cheered up when the beautician arrived and turned out to be a pretty but plump girl who was bursting out of her white beautician’s dress.

‘Oh, you’ve lovely skin,’ cooed the girl in a lilting Cork accent. ‘And your eyes are amazing. I’ve just the colour for you.’